When to use \...\m in regular expressions? - ruby-on-rails

If I have this string:
st = "The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Never lose a holy curiosity."
and I want to match "Curiosity" using a regular expression, can I use
/Curiosity/m === st
When do you typically make use of \...\m ?
Thank you very much, I appreciate it!

No, you do not need it for your example case. m is a modifier that allows the dot (that means by default any character except the newline) to match also newlines.
Note that this meaning of the m modifier is specific to ruby and its regex engine, in other languages, that uses other regex engines, the modifer m has a different meaning.
Examples:
/a.*b/ matches "a#123opi[b"
but it doesn't match "a#123
opi[b"
because by default the dot . doesn't match a newline.
/a.*b/m does because the m modifier changes the meaning of the dot and allows it to match newlines.

Related

Ruby Convert string into undescore, avoid the "/" in the resulting string

I have a name spaced class..
"CommonCar::RedTrunk"
I need to convert it to an underscored string "common_car_red_trunk", but when I use
"CommonCar::RedTrunk".underscore, I get "common_car/red_trunk" instead.
Is there another method to accomplish what I need?
Solutions:
"CommonCar::RedTrunk".gsub(':', '').underscore
or:
"CommonCar::RedTrunk".sub('::', '').underscore
or:
"CommonCar::RedTrunk".tr(':', '').underscore
Alternate:
Or turn any of these around and do the underscore() first, followed by whatever method you want to use to replace "/" with "_".
Explanation:
While all of these methods look basically the same, there are subtle differences that can be very impactful.
In short:
gsub() – uses a regex to do pattern matching, therefore, it's finding any occurrence of ":" and replacing it with "".
sub() – uses a regex to do pattern matching, similarly to gsub(), with the exception that it's only finding the first occurrence (the "g" in gsub() meaning "global"). This is why when using that method, it was necessary to use "::", otherwise a single ":" would have been left. Keep in mind with this method, it will only work with a single-nested namespace. Meaning "CommonCar::RedTrunk::BigWheels" would have been transformed to "CommonCarRedTrunk::BigWheels".
tr() – uses the string parameters as arrays of single character replacments. In this case, because we're only replacing a single character, it'll work identically to gsub(). However, if you wanted to replace "on" with "EX", for example, gsub("on", "EX") would produce "CommEXCar::RedTrunk" while tr("on", "EX") would produce "CEmmEXCar::RedTruXk".
Docs:
https://apidock.com/ruby/String/gsub
https://apidock.com/ruby/String/sub
https://apidock.com/ruby/String/tr
This is a pure-Ruby solution.
r = /(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])|::/
"CommonCar::RedTrunk".gsub(r, '_').downcase
#=> "common_car_red_trunk"
See (the first form of) String#gsub and String#downcase.
The regular expression can be made self-documenting by writing it in free-spacing mode:
r = /
(?<=[a-z]) # assert that the previous character is lower-case
(?=[A-Z]) # assert that the following character is upper-case
| # or
:: # match '::'
/x # free-spacing regex definition mode
(?<=[a-z]) is a positive lookbehind; (?=[A-Z]) is a positive lookahead.
Note that /(?<=[a-z])(?=[A-Z])/ matches an empty ("zero-width") string. r matches, for example, the empty string between 'Common' and 'Car', because it is preceeded by a lower-case letter and followed by an upper-case letter.
I don't know Rails but I'm guessing you could write
"CommonCar::RedTrunk".delete(':').underscore

Validate name to have no tabs or backslashes - Rails [duplicate]

I need a regular expression able to match everything but a string starting with a specific pattern (specifically index.php and what follows, like index.php?id=2342343).
Regex: match everything but:
a string starting with a specific pattern (e.g. any - empty, too - string not starting with foo):
Lookahead-based solution for NFAs:
^(?!foo).*$
^(?!foo)
Negated character class based solution for regex engines not supporting lookarounds:
^(([^f].{2}|.[^o].|.{2}[^o]).*|.{0,2})$
^([^f].{2}|.[^o].|.{2}[^o])|^.{0,2}$
a string ending with a specific pattern (say, no world. at the end):
Lookbehind-based solution:
(?<!world\.)$
^.*(?<!world\.)$
Lookahead solution:
^(?!.*world\.$).*
^(?!.*world\.$)
POSIX workaround:
^(.*([^w].{5}|.[^o].{4}|.{2}[^r].{3}|.{3}[^l].{2}|.{4}[^d].|.{5}[^.])|.{0,5})$
([^w].{5}|.[^o].{4}|.{2}[^r].{3}|.{3}[^l].{2}|.{4}[^d].|.{5}[^.]$|^.{0,5})$
a string containing specific text (say, not match a string having foo):
Lookaround-based solution:
^(?!.*foo)
^(?!.*foo).*$
POSIX workaround:
Use the online regex generator at www.formauri.es/personal/pgimeno/misc/non-match-regex
a string containing specific character (say, avoid matching a string having a | symbol):
^[^|]*$
a string equal to some string (say, not equal to foo):
Lookaround-based:
^(?!foo$)
^(?!foo$).*$
POSIX:
^(.{0,2}|.{4,}|[^f]..|.[^o].|..[^o])$
a sequence of characters:
PCRE (match any text but cat): /cat(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|[^c]*(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)*/i or /cat(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|(?:(?!cat).)+/is
Other engines allowing lookarounds: (cat)|[^c]*(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)* (or (?s)(cat)|(?:(?!cat).)*, or (cat)|[^c]+(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)*|(?:c(?!at)[^c]*)+[^c]*) and then check with language means: if Group 1 matched, it is not what we need, else, grab the match value if not empty
a certain single character or a set of characters:
Use a negated character class: [^a-z]+ (any char other than a lowercase ASCII letter)
Matching any char(s) but |: [^|]+
Demo note: the newline \n is used inside negated character classes in demos to avoid match overflow to the neighboring line(s). They are not necessary when testing individual strings.
Anchor note: In many languages, use \A to define the unambiguous start of string, and \z (in Python, it is \Z, in JavaScript, $ is OK) to define the very end of the string.
Dot note: In many flavors (but not POSIX, TRE, TCL), . matches any char but a newline char. Make sure you use a corresponding DOTALL modifier (/s in PCRE/Boost/.NET/Python/Java and /m in Ruby) for the . to match any char including a newline.
Backslash note: In languages where you have to declare patterns with C strings allowing escape sequences (like \n for a newline), you need to double the backslashes escaping special characters so that the engine could treat them as literal characters (e.g. in Java, world\. will be declared as "world\\.", or use a character class: "world[.]"). Use raw string literals (Python r'\bworld\b'), C# verbatim string literals #"world\.", or slashy strings/regex literal notations like /world\./.
You could use a negative lookahead from the start, e.g., ^(?!foo).*$ shouldn't match anything starting with foo.
You can put a ^ in the beginning of a character set to match anything but those characters.
[^=]*
will match everything but =
Just match /^index\.php/, and then reject whatever matches it.
In Python:
>>> import re
>>> p='^(?!index\.php\?[0-9]+).*$'
>>> s1='index.php?12345'
>>> re.match(p,s1)
>>> s2='index.html?12345'
>>> re.match(p,s2)
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb7d65fa8>
Came across this thread after a long search. I had this problem for multiple searches and replace of some occurrences. But the pattern I used was matching till the end. Example below
import re
text = "start![image]xxx(xx.png) yyy xx![image]xxx(xxx.png) end"
replaced_text = re.sub(r'!\[image\](.*)\(.*\.png\)', '*', text)
print(replaced_text)
gave
start* end
Basically, the regex was matching from the first ![image] to the last .png, swallowing the middle yyy
Used the method posted above https://stackoverflow.com/a/17761124/429476 by Firish to break the match between the occurrence. Here the space is not matched; as the words are separated by space.
replaced_text = re.sub(r'!\[image\]([^ ]*)\([^ ]*\.png\)', '*', text)
and got what I wanted
start* yyy xx* end

How can I combine words with numbers when pattern matching in LUA?

I'm trying to match any strings that come in that follow the format Word 100.00% ~(45.56, 34.76) in LUA. As such, I'm looking to do a regex close (in theory) to this:
%D%s[%d%.%d]%%(%d.%d, %d.%d)
But I'm having no luck so far. LUA's patterns are weird.
What am I missing?
Your pattern is close you neglected to allow for multiple instances of a digit you can do this by using a + at like %d+.
You also did not use [,( and . correctly in the pattern.
[s in a pattern will create a set of chars that you are trying to match such as [abc] means you are looking to match any as bs or c at that position.
( are used to define a capture so the specific values you want returned rather then the whole string in the event of a match, in order to use it as a char you for the match you need to escape it with a %.
. will match any character rather then specifically a . you will need to add a % to escape if you want to match a . specifically.
local str = "Word 100.00% ~(45.56, 34.76)"
local pattern = "%w+%s%d+%.%d+%%%s~%(%d+%.%d+, %d+%.%d+%)"
print(string.match(str, pattern))
Here you will see the input string print if it matches the pattern otherwise you will see nil.
Suggested resource: Understanding Lua Patterns

How to match `\b` in regex in PetitParserDart?

\b is the "world boundary" in regular expression, how to match it in PetitParserDart?
I tried:
pattern("\b") & word().plus() & pattern("\b")
But it doesn't match anything. The patten above I want is \b\w+\b in regular expression.
My real problem is:
I want to treat the render as a token, only if it's a standalone word.
Following is true:
render
to render the page
render()
#render[it]
Following is not:
rerender
rendering
render123
I can't use string("render").trim() here since it will eat up the spaces around it. So I want the \b but it seems not be supported by PetitParserDart.
The parser returned by pattern only looks at a single character. Have a look at the tests for some examples.
A first approximation of the regular expression \b\w+\b would be:
word().neg() & word().plus() & word().not()
However, this requires a non-word character at the beginning of the parsed string. You can avoid this problem by removing word().neg() and making sure that the caller starts at a valid place.
The problem you describe is common when using parsing expression grammars. You can typically solve it by reordering the choices accordingly, or by using the logical predicates like and() and not(). For example the Smalltalk grammar defines the token true as follows:
def('trueToken', _token('true') & word().not());
This avoids that the token parser accidentally consumes part of a variable called trueblood.

Matching function in erlang based on string format

I have user information coming in from an outside source and I need to check if that user is active. Sometimes I have a User and a Server and other times I have User#Server. The former case is no problem, I just have:
active(User, Server) ->
do whatever.
What I would like to do with the User#Server case is something like:
active([User, "#", Server]) ->
active(User, Server).
Doesn't seem to work. When calling active in the erlang terminal with a#b for example, I get an error that there is no match. Any help would be appreciated!
You can tokenize the string to get the result:
active(UserString) ->
[User,Server] = string:tokens(UserString,"#"),
active(User,Server).
If you need something more elaborate, or with better handling of something like email addresses, it might then be time to delve into using regular expressions with the re module.
active(UserString) ->
RegEx = "^([\\w\\.-]+)#([\\w\\.-]+)$",
{match, [User,Server]} = re:run(UserString,RegEx,[{capture,all_but_first,list}]),
active(User,Server).
Note: The supplied Regex is hardly sufficient for email address validation, it's just an example that allows all alphanumeric characters including underscores (\\w), dots (\\.), and dashes (-) seperated by an at symbol. And it will fail if the match doesn't stretch the whole length of the string: (^ to $).
A note on the pattern matching, for the real solution to your problem I think #chops suggestions should be used.
When matching patterns against strings I think it's useful to keep in mind that erlang strings are really lists of integers. So the string "#" is actually the same as [64] (64 being the ascii code for #)
This means that you match pattern [User, "#", Server] will match lists like: [97,[64],98], but not "a#b" (which in list form is [97,64,98]).
To match the string you need to do [User,$#,Server]. The $ operator gives you the ascii value of the character.
However this match pattern limits the matching string to be 1 character followed by # and then one more character...
It can be improved by doing [User, $# | Server] which allows the server part to have arbitrary length, but the User variable will still only match one single character (and I don't see a way around that).

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